Chapter 22

“It’s a cool song, but what is the message. I mean, I get the message in the big context, but what are you trying to tell me? I’m not nearly as smart as you give me credit for being.” I said looking into Sarah’s Eyes.

“Hell Ty, you are one of the brightest men I’ve ever known. No, you probably can’t solve any great Mathematical equations, but in your own way you are a visionary,” Sarah said.

“Enough with the pretty songs, and the smoke up my ass, give it too me straight. What are you trying to tell me?” I demanded.

“Like the song says, I wouldn’t blame you if you left me, after you know who I really am,” she explained,

“Okay, let’s have it,” I said it while I removed my makeshift tea pot from the microwave oven in the shack. Instead of tea it held day old black coffee. Coffee seemed better for a serious talk than iced tea. I had no idea why, but it did.

“I have to start at the beginning I guess. When I was seventeen I met a man. I used to think that I was a Revolutionary and he was part of that revolution. Back then my daddy used to call them radicals and spit. Now we would call them terrorist, I suppose. It doesn’t matter I knew it wasn’t the real lasting kind of love. It was just an infatuation and I knew it. Nonetheless I got pregnant as an eighteen year old college freshman. Fortunately I never blew up anything, or did anything more serious than to write manifestos, and carry signs.

After I had the baby, I had a real life decision to make. I had to decide whether I wanted it or not. Billy became the center of my life from day one.” She said the last with a very different kind of smile on her face. In some ways that smile warned me that the rest of her tale was going to be painful for us both.

“Billy’s father was too busy with the revolution to be involved with Billy. He also got into drugs after I left the cell. When Billy was three, he died from an overdose. He never came to see Billy, nonetheless I wanted Billy to know that I was a socialist before it was cool and he had a father.

My dad convinced me that telling Billy would only make his life worse, so he made up a fiction about the circumstances of Billy’s parentage. In my dad’s version of it, I was a young freshman college student who got raped. I loved Billy so much, I couldn’t let him be put up for adoption. That part of daddy’s fiction was true,” she said.

“So Billy’s father was black,” I guessed.

“A black radical,” she said.

“Where is Billy now?” I asked. Doing the math in my head.

“He graduated from the Duke Law School two years ago. He is working for one of those save the world groups. They even have time to defend radical socialists, now and then. I guess the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.” Sarah said.

“I suppose not, but I don’t know enough to make a judgment. But your son, whoever he is, doesn’t explain the song,” I suggested.

“Ah you are right, there is more to the story,” she said.

“There always is,” I agreed.

“I wasn’t a racist, but Billy and I kept to ourselves. His friends were all from the private christian school which he attended. It was one of those church schools in North Wilkesboro at first. Then, when he was old enough, it was Glad Valley Academy. I’m not racist but I kept him away from the African American culture of gangs and guns,” she explained. “Not to mention it was drugs that killed his father.”

I just nodded as she took a break.

“While I was going to school, my mom help me a lot with Billy. My dad was a farmer and I hated it. He made pretty good money, at least the four of us never went hungry. I got some scholarships and some student loans to finish my schooling. I graduated from college with a BS in nursing and a lot of student loans.

After graduation I found out daddy was a big time moonshiner in those parts. So bootlegging helped pay my way through school. It’s why I wasn’t upset having to do business with you. I do admit that thanks to Ester I was prepared for your little test. Otherwise I would have lost it completely.

I worked in the ER. I loved the action of the emergency room. It also provided a lot of overtime to help with those loans. There I met a doctor whose specialty was emergency medicine. We couldn’t have been more different. I was a socialist and the doctor was a strict conservative christian. It took a while but of course we fell in love. The three of us lived together. In those days two women couldn’t get married. When they changed the law Marty and I quickly got married. Our love goes back a lot farther than that though.

Marty is who I thought about when I heard that song again two weeks ago. I had been trying to decide what to do, when I heard it on Utube. It’s been making me crazy ever since. I just know, I have to tell you both about what I’ve done.”

“Okay I get it. I’m glad you told me before we got anymore serious. I wish I could tell you something, but I really can’t come up with anything right now.”

I refilled my coffee cup and sat looking at the wall across the shack. I wanted to break the silence, I wanted to ask a hundred questions, Slowly it sank in Sarah unlike me had to do the right thing every fucking time. She might be trying to experiment in her forties. To compensate for her her forced straight life in her twenties. She couldn’t justify sneaking around even as an adult. I didn’t know how I felt about that. Hell, I hadn’t even realized that what she did would effect me, but for some reason this did.

“I suppose it’s out of the question to ask you to come to bed and make love with me?” I asked.

“It is. I decided that Marty and I make love. You and I fuck like a couple of teenagers, so if that will do, I’m game,” Sarah replied.

It dawned on me how serious this thing was to her. I couldn’t decide on anything at that moment. So like she suggested, we fucked like a couple of teenagers.

After we finished the hot, nasty, and maybe our last sex, I fell asleep as men often do. It was probably nature’s way of giving the females time to escape their sex partners in prehistoric days. I didn’t know, but it sounded logical. When I awoke, Sarah wasn’t in the bed. I looked across the room and saw her at my computer table. Since I couldn’t remember what I had been doing, I jerked to attention then moved to the desk. It sat against the wall on the side of the shack with the chicken house view.